Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Hello! I can't believe November is almost half over. Where has the time gone?!? It always seems like once Halloween hits the rest of the year is a blur of holidays, parties, and events. I hope this year I can step back and relax and really just enjoy myself and the time with my family. I'm almost done with all of my Christmas shopping and let me say, it feels GREAT! I've never done my shopping so early but I thought if I get it out of the way now I'll have more time for baking cookies, sledding, building snowmen, you know... the important stuff.

Back in September I shared my "recipe" for making homemade laundry soap. My cousin mentioned on Facebook that she uses the same recipe but instead of grating her Ivory soap, she microwaves it and then just squeezes it. Huh??? I checked online and sure enough, using Ivory only (other soaps just melt) you can microwave it for about a minute and a half and it puffs up into a giant cloud of soap that you can then break apart into tiny flakes with your hands or a food processor. I used my hands because I was worried the food processor would melt it into bigger chunks.

Normal bar of Ivory soap on a piece of wax paper in the microwave. If you have the option to turn the turntable off, I'd recommend it. I didn't and I think my soap could have gotten bigger if it didn't end up stuck in the corner due to the turntable spinning.

Here it is all puffed up into a soap cloud. It feels a lot like just slightly stale cotton candy.

And here it is all squished into flakes and in my container waiting for the other ingredients.

Pretty cool! K thought it was really neat too. I have to say that while it is a lot easier than grating, I'm able to get a more fine texture than with the microwaving. I have more chunks in this batch than usual although thankfully they are easily dissolved in the washing machine.